Recall test

In cognitive psychology, a recall test is a test of memory in which participants are presented with stimuli and then, after a delay, are asked to remember as many of the stimuli as possible. Memory performance can be measures as a percentage of the stimuli that are remembered. For example, studying a list of 10 words and later recalling 3 of them is 30 percent recall.) Participants' responses can also be analyzed to determine if there is a pattern to the way items are recalled. For example, if participants are given a list consisting of types of fruits and models of cars, their recall can be analyzed to determine whether they grouped cards together and fruits together as they were recalling them.) Recall is also involved when a person is asked to recollect life events, such as graduating high school, or to recall facts they have learned, such as the capital of Florida.

Measuring recall contrasts with measuring recognition, in which people are asked to pick an item that have previously seen or heard from a number of other items that they have not seen or heard, as occurs for multiple-choice questions on an exam.

Types of Recall

Free Recall Test

In a free recall test, a participant is simply asked to recall stimuli. These stimuli could be words previously presented by the experimenter or events experienced earlier in the participant's life.

Cued Recall Test

A cued recall test is a procedure for testing memory in which a participant is presented with cues, such as words or phrases, to aid recall of previously experienced stimuli. Endel Tulving and Zena Pearlstone (1966) did an experiment in which they presented participants with a list of words to remember. The words were drawn from specific categories such as birds (pigeon, sparrow), furniture (chair, dresser), and professions (engineer, lawyer), although the categories were not specifically indicated in the original list. For the memory test, participants in the free recall group were asked to write down as many words as they could. Participants in the cued recall group were also asked to recall the words, but were provided with the names of the categories, "birds," "furniture," and "professions." The results of Tulving and Pearlstone's experiment demonstrate that retrieval cues aid memory. Participants in the free recall group 40 percent of the words, whereas participants in the cued recall group recalled 75 percent of the words.

Factors Affecting Recall

Encoding Specificity

The principle of encoding specificity states that we encode information along with its context. The memory utilizes cues from with the information was encoded and from the environment in which it is being retrieved.

State-Dependent Learning

This is another example of how matching the conditions at the encoding and retrieval can influence memory. State-dependent learning is associated with a particular internal state, such as mood or state of awareness. According to the principle of state-dependent learning, memory will be better when a person's internal state during retrieval matches his or her internal state during encoding. Two ways of matching encoding and retrieval include matching the physical situation (encoding specificity) or an internal feeling (state-dependent learning).

Transfer-Appropriate Processing

The phenomenon of transfer-appropriate processing shows that memory performance is enhanced if the type of task at encoding matches the type of task at retrieval. Two examples include meaning condition, in which the task focused on the meaning of a word, and rhyming condition, in which the task focused on the sound of a word.

Levels of Processing Theory

The main idea behind the LOP theory is that deeper processing leads to better encoding and, therefore, better retrieval.

References

Goldstein, B. (2011). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience--with coglab manual. (3rd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.